hce_tcu
113年
英文
第 41 題
📖 題組：
【C】Even if the term “appropriate technology” is a relatively new one, the concept certainly isn’t. In the 1930s, Mahatma Gandhi claimed that the advanced technology used by Western industrialized nations did not represent the right route to progress for his homeland, India. His favorite machines were the sewing machine, a device invented “out of love,” he said, and the bicycle, which he rode all his life. He wanted the poor villagers of India to use technology that empowered them and helped them to become self-reliant. This was also the philosophy promoted by E. F. Schumacher in his famous 1970s book Small Is Beautiful, which called for “intermediate technology” solutions. Do not start with technology and see what it can do for people, he argued. Instead, “find out what people are doing and then help them to do it better.” According to Schumacher, it did not matter whether the technological answers to people’s needs were simple or sophisticated. What was important was that solutions were long-term, practical, and, above all, firmly in the hands of the users. More recently, the term “appropriate technology” has come to mean not just technology which is suited to the needs and capabilities of the user, but technology that takes particular account of environmental, ethical, and cultural considerations. This is clearly a much more difficult thing to achieve. Often appropriate technology is found in rural communities in developing or less industrialized countries. For example, solar-powered lamps that bring light to areas with no electricity and water purifiers that work simply by the action of sucking through a straw. But the principle of appropriate technology does not only apply to developing countries. It also has its place in the developed world. For example, a Swedish state-owned company has found a way to harness the energy produced by the 250,000 bodies rushing through Stockholm’s central train station each day. The body heat is absorbed by the building’s ventilation system, then used to warm up water that is pumped through pipes over to the new office building nearby. It’s old technology, a system of pipes, water, and pumps, but used in a new way. It is expected to bring down central heating costs in the building by up to 20 percent. However, wherever it is deployed, there is no guarantee that appropriate technology will in fact be appropriate. After some visiting engineers observed how labor-intensive and slow it was for the women of a Guatemalan village to shell corn by hand, they designed a simple mechanical device to do the job more quickly. The new device certainly saved time, but after a few weeks the women returned to the old manual method. Why? Because they valued the time that hand-shelling gave them to chat and exchange news. In another case, in Malawi, a local entrepreneur was encouraged to manufacture super-efficient wood-burning stoves to sell to local villagers. Burning wood on an open fire, which is traditional in the developing world, is responsible for 10-20 percent of all global $CO_2$ emissions, so this seemed to be an excellent scheme. However, the entrepreneur was so successful that he bought himself a whole fleet of gas-guzzling cars. “We haven’t worked out the $CO_2$ implications of that yet,” said a spokesman for the organization that promoted the scheme.
【C】Even if the term “appropriate technology” is a relatively new one, the concept certainly isn’t. In the 1930s, Mahatma Gandhi claimed that the advanced technology used by Western industrialized nations did not represent the right route to progress for his homeland, India. His favorite machines were the sewing machine, a device invented “out of love,” he said, and the bicycle, which he rode all his life. He wanted the poor villagers of India to use technology that empowered them and helped them to become self-reliant. This was also the philosophy promoted by E. F. Schumacher in his famous 1970s book Small Is Beautiful, which called for “intermediate technology” solutions. Do not start with technology and see what it can do for people, he argued. Instead, “find out what people are doing and then help them to do it better.” According to Schumacher, it did not matter whether the technological answers to people’s needs were simple or sophisticated. What was important was that solutions were long-term, practical, and, above all, firmly in the hands of the users. More recently, the term “appropriate technology” has come to mean not just technology which is suited to the needs and capabilities of the user, but technology that takes particular account of environmental, ethical, and cultural considerations. This is clearly a much more difficult thing to achieve. Often appropriate technology is found in rural communities in developing or less industrialized countries. For example, solar-powered lamps that bring light to areas with no electricity and water purifiers that work simply by the action of sucking through a straw. But the principle of appropriate technology does not only apply to developing countries. It also has its place in the developed world. For example, a Swedish state-owned company has found a way to harness the energy produced by the 250,000 bodies rushing through Stockholm’s central train station each day. The body heat is absorbed by the building’s ventilation system, then used to warm up water that is pumped through pipes over to the new office building nearby. It’s old technology, a system of pipes, water, and pumps, but used in a new way. It is expected to bring down central heating costs in the building by up to 20 percent. However, wherever it is deployed, there is no guarantee that appropriate technology will in fact be appropriate. After some visiting engineers observed how labor-intensive and slow it was for the women of a Guatemalan village to shell corn by hand, they designed a simple mechanical device to do the job more quickly. The new device certainly saved time, but after a few weeks the women returned to the old manual method. Why? Because they valued the time that hand-shelling gave them to chat and exchange news. In another case, in Malawi, a local entrepreneur was encouraged to manufacture super-efficient wood-burning stoves to sell to local villagers. Burning wood on an open fire, which is traditional in the developing world, is responsible for 10-20 percent of all global $CO_2$ emissions, so this seemed to be an excellent scheme. However, the entrepreneur was so successful that he bought himself a whole fleet of gas-guzzling cars. “We haven’t worked out the $CO_2$ implications of that yet,” said a spokesman for the organization that promoted the scheme.
Which one of the following statements is true according to the reading?
- A Gandhi coined the term “appropriate technology.”
- B The concept of appropriate technology is relatively new.
- C Schumacher claimed that technology should provide long-term and practical solutions for its users.
- D Gandhi preferred advanced technology because it represented the right route to progress for India.
思路引導 VIP
當我們在閱讀一段關於新舊觀念的論述時，文章的第一段通常會區分「一個名稱的出現」與「一個想法的起源」。如果請你重新掃描前兩段，哪些段落描述了「特定人物」對於技術應該具備什麼樣「特徵」的具體看法？這些看法又是如何描述理想中的技術與使用者之間的關係呢？
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AI 詳解
AI 專屬家教
恭喜你精準地從文章中提取了關鍵資訊！這題的答案隱藏在第二段關於舒馬克（E. F. Schumacher）理念的敘述中。文中明確指出，對舒馬克而言，技術本身是否尖端並不重要，核心在於這些解決方案必須具備「長期性（long-term）」、「實用性（practical）」且「由使用者掌握」。你選擇了 (C) 選項，展現了你對細節的高效掌握力。
概念與名詞的細微差別
這題的鑑別度在於誘答選項的設計，特別是 (A) 與 (B)。文章第一句就提到「適當技術（appropriate technology）」這個名詞相對較新，但其概念卻由來已久。許多考生可能會混淆名詞的出現與概念的起源，而將兩者混為一談。此外，(D) 選項則是典型的資訊反向誤導，甘地實際上是反對西方工業化的先進技術。你能在這些細微的描述中精準排除干擾項，代表你的閱讀理解非常扎實且細膩！